From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Circus director and lion tamer Gerd Siemoneit-Barum during a
performance in Nordenham, Germany in May 1977

Lion taming is the practice of taming lions, either for protection, whereby
the practice was probably created, or, more commonly,
entertainment, particularly in the circus. The term is also often used for the
taming and display of other big cats such as tigers, leopards, jaguars, cheetahs, and pumas. Lion taming is
used as a stereotypical dangerous occupation due to the obvious
risks of toying with powerful instinctive carnivores.

Lion taming is performed in zoos across the world, to enable
less dangerous feeding and to bring more profit by holding
programmes like cub petting.

In recent years the "taming" of wild animals for performance
purposes has drawn accusations of cruelty. [1].

Lion
tamers

Rose Flanders Bascom was an American female lion tamer in the
early 1900s.[2] She was
born in 1880 in the village of Contoocook within the town of
Hopkinton, New Hampshire. In
1898 she married Alfred Bascom who was of French Canadian ancestry
but born in the United States. About 1905, Rose joined the circus
life and became a lion tamer. It is reported that she was clawed by
a lion resulting in an infection that led to her untimely death
around the year of 1915, leaving her husband Alfred and their young
daughter Agnes.

Clyde Beatty
(1903-1965) was among the pioneers to use a chair in training big
cats.

Thomas Beckerson was an English botanist who studied in Africa
but was fascinated by the lions there and brought back his lion
taming skills to Victorian London.

George
Wombwell (1777-1850), founder of Wombwell's Travelling
Menagerie, raised many animals himself including the first lion to
be bred in captivity in Britain. He was buried in Highgate
Cemetery, under a statue of his lion Nero.